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Tiny Linux PDA: Filewalker
senseimoron writes: "Check out the Filewalker, a new Linux-based handheld, with a very unique (one-handed) means of inputting characters. It is too difficult to explain, just checkout the site. I'd be interested to see how well the interface works." The English link may be more useful. From the price listed on the site, it would sell for US$560.
You can download and view the source to WinCE, but you can't legaly do anything with it.
:P). I mean the whole point of a PDA is to have something 'cool' really, and for some people linux does make it cooler. If people are willing to buy these things, why not use Linux?
But anyway, that question is kind of stupid. I mean you could have asked the same thing about linux on the desktop a couple of years ago, I mean we had macOS and windows and Unix for people to use.
And I think that the really important thing to remember here is that, for the most part, PDAs are toys. Even the loweliest, most out of date used Palm could do just about anything you really needed organizer wise. People buy these things because they're fun. Sure, they might not admit it, but you really don't need a PC you can fit in your pocket that can play MP3s and Divx movies. People want those things because it's fun.
And Linux is fun for some people. It's also cheaper then licensing WinCE or Palm (and it gets you free play on slashdot
(Btw, I just hate people who always have to ask 'do we really need this' I mean, do we really need anything do we need video game systems, or fast cars or DVD players?)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Its actually alot faster to use button combinations rather than a roller wheel. You don't need alot of buttons to do that, either.
Or, if you want a good but portable keyboard, use a one handed one:
http://www.halfkeyboard.com/
Either of these concepts would work much better in a PDA than a roller wheel - where you have multiple rolls then a press for each character. Unlike every other alternative (graffiti, keyboard, half keyboard) this one takes multiple actions per character, and you would have to look at the screen to know which character you were at because its state dependent.
My 2 cents worth
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
Please see my comment on this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25075&cid=2724 965
The gist of it is that Linux is suited to many different types of devices. Windows CE is not by any stretch of the imagination "Open Source". And it is definitely not Free Software.
As another poster has mentioned what good is source that you can't even legally compile? The only purpose it serves is that if someone were to look at it for purposes of reimplementing parts of it correctly (e.g. for Wine) they'd get a big nasty fat lawsuit slapped on 'em by MS. No thanks. Couple this with the fact that you must sign up for an MS passport to get this stuff and thus they know who downloaded it you can rest assured that MS will most definitely go after anyone who releases rewrites of Windows code after having viewed this.
I've looked at your user info page, trying to find anything actually indicating that you are in fact Charles Petzold. At least I suppose you don't hide the fact that you work for MS. And if you really want to know why people want to use Linux for everything then start using it. Start programming with it. From the sounds of your other comments you have played with Linux programming but you seem to fail to understand the fundamental differences in architecture. That works both ways. I am writing a program right now for work and am really pissed about all this overlapped IO crap. Why isn't there just a damn "select()" call? Why can't everything be a file descriptor? What is this WaitForMultipleObjects crap they have tried to pass of as select but can't even because for all intents and purposes you really /HAVE/ to go multithreaded in some cases because you can't just add something to your GUIs main loop such as "when data is available to read from the pipe, return a message and process as usual". Or maybe there is but I sure as hell haven't found a way.
Anyway, enough ranting about the broken WinAPI for now. I really hope you find some time to actually use and program on a Linux system. You won't look back.